Standing at the threshold of his new three-bedroom apartment, strawberry picker Gerardo Lopez marveled at his good fortune.
Just two months ago, the 32-year-old widowed father of three was living in central Oxnard in a converted garage where he and his children slept on the floor.
Today, Lopez lives at the Meta Street Apartments in a spacious two-story unit with a dishwasher, washer and dryer and two-car garage. And like most others at the pioneering farmworker housing project, thanks to a federal assistance program, he pays only 30% of his income -- in his case, $340 a month -- toward rent.
"I never imagined I would ever be able to live in a place so beautiful," said Lopez, just home from a day in the fields, his pants stained red with berry juice. "It's like a dream come true."
The Meta Street project, the first large-scale farmworker housing built in Ventura County in more than a decade, celebrated its grand opening Saturday with speeches, mariachi music and tenant-guided tours of the 24-unit facility.
Representative of statewide efforts, the $5.9-million complex was built with city, state and federal funds on the site of a rundown motel in downtown Oxnard. The complex opened March 13, filling up that day with more than 100 residents. The laborers' commune has a waiting list of more than 60 families.
The units represent a drop in the bucket toward meeting farmworker housing needs in Ventura County. Housing advocates say scores of laborers live in squalor, packed into toolsheds and garages or 10 to 15 per house to pay the rent.
But what Meta Street lacks in scale, it makes up for in symbolism. The complex is the first of many projects to emerge from a campaign to shelter those who supply the muscle for Ventura County's $1-billion farm industry.
Growers, labor advocates, elected leaders and others are pushing like never before to provide farmworker housing, driven by a belief that the low-wage work force is being hit hard by the county's soaring rents and skyrocketing home prices.
Nearly 150 farmworker housing units are in the planning stages, including a 24-unit rental project in Santa Paula and a 58-unit project at a former slum housing site in south Oxnard.
The newfound focus comes after years of arm-twisting by affordable-housing advocates, as lawsuits have prompted commitments to farmworker housing. It also is triggered by broader concern for all segments of the work force in a county where the median home price reached $470,000 last month.
